@mullermj if I put my Roku3 on wireless (2.4GHz) and do the following two tests I get very poor results:
stream 1080p material encoded at 12Mbps from my hard wired Plex server video constantly stutters or buffers
stream from Netflix an HD video the resolution never gets above 720p if I’m lucky (run the test video to see what I mean)
If I hard wire the Roku3 all the problems go away.
Using wireless, especially with 2.4GHz, means you cannot stream at high bit rates and you have to transcode. Tablo offers you three levels of encoding to deal with it. In your case you will have to have the 720P Roku/Chromecast option.
So in short this has nothing to do with Tablo and everything to do with your network and hardware choices.
Well all, Roku 1 streams everything else just fine without a hiccup. Vudu, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu just to name the most used and the only thing that chokes is Tablo. Again, I checked their website and while Tablo mentions streaming live or recorded over Wifi or 3/4G they never mention it doesn’t work right unless you’re using 5ghz or wired ethernet. (Luker your comments are exactly what I’m talking about) Even a rating graphic such as good, better, or best for the platforms they have tested would go a long way. I appreciate all the discussion on what spending additional money did for you, however still needing the Tablo folks to come through on their current platform.
Oh and the Tablo folks have already pointed out the new UI won’t negatively affect the experience on the Roku 1. Not sure where it was said by the Tablo folks that the new UI will run very slow on the Roku 1.
Part of the issue (I think) lies in the fact that Netflix and Hulu can support a wide range of bitrates for their source content, and support dynamically changing the bitrate of the stream to the client in response to changing network conditions.
For various reasons Tablo doesn’t do that for local network streaming. If that were to be the case the Tablo hardware would almost certainly need to be much beefier (and thus more expensive), and it would likely require use of a tuner every time a client was viewing something, in order to transcode to the required bitrate. For Live TV watching this would be even more acute, because one tuner would be needed to transcode the MPEG2 to “native” H264, and then another tuner for each client that is watching the live stream in order to transcode down to the bitrate that the client can handle under the current network conditions.